


Moraka

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, F/M, Mental Breakdown, No Smut, One Shot, Psychological Trauma, Sad, Spoilers, super sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:12:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: Pagan breaks like a dropped vase.





	Moraka

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a one-off while I was writing my other, much bigger fic, [ Life in Dark Places](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15116417?view_full_work=true) and Moraka became sort of a cornerstone for that one. It is explicit M/M Pagan/Ajay, so that's definitely not to everyone's tastes, but I thought I would link it here so if anyone who read this fic and enjoyed it might like to see where it fits in the context of a much larger story. 
> 
>  
> 
> Seriously sad. Like, why did I write this? Am I a masochist or something? I mean, this pairing is by nature a sad one, but Jesus... 
> 
> Contains possibly disturbing images of someone completely losing themselves in the face of trauma.  
> Moraka is peacock in Nepalese.

\---------------------------------------

 

_He’s holding Ishwari tight and his hands won’t stop shaking and she is screaming and screaming and screaming and screaming. She screamed herself hoarse and still can’t stop. Those choking cries are the saddest sound that he has ever heard, but what is sadder is that he can’t find any words of comfort for her._

_He was the one to find her and when he did, it felt like ice water had rushed into his belly, filling him until it reached his heart, his throat, and froze there. Lacking anything else, he had pulled his own shirt off and carefully wrapped it around her tiny body. For the first time in his life, he has no words. He can’t force any sound out past that obstruction, the iceberg in his chest._

_She makes a pitifully small bundle in his arms._

_He holds Ishwari, holds the baby, tries to hold the three of them together because they’re flying apart, he can feel it...where is Ajay? He needs to hold him too. Hold them all together. He turns, looking for the boy_

_The next thing he knows, he’s approaching the burning ghat with Ishwari beside him. In his hands is the tiny bundle that both is and is no longer Lakshmana. It appears that they’ve forgone the traditional shroud and are sending his little girl to the flames in that shirt, his shirt; pale peach silk, (one of Ishwari’s favorites, he thinks irrelevantly) neatly pressed and pinned._

_He’s wearing his nicest suit, not the pink Chinese brocade, but the sober gray wool one he keeps for occasions just like this. He knows this because he can see his own sleeve. His cufflinks are the pair that Ishwari gave him last Christmas. He’d given Ajay an elephant, which the boy had promptly named Hurli. His present from Lakshmana was a pin shaped like a silver peacock that Ishwari had had made for him. She had loved chasing them around the palace grounds, fat baby legs running, falling on soft grass, running again. His own little moraka._

_His thoughts feel like leaves swirling in water, sinking, only to be pushed up again. He feels like there’s something missing, something that he should be feeling but the ice in his chest is blocking that too. Ishwari’s hand is on his arm but he can’t feel that either._

_As they approach the pyre it strikes him that he’s going to have to take his tiny daughter’s body and lay it in the fire. He must be the one to do this because he is the King. The thought of putting her there brings a sudden dull pressure in the vicinity of his heart, and it’s distracting enough that Ishwari has to tug him to a stop. It’s good that she did so; if she hadn’t he might have just kept walking right into_

_When he becomes aware of himself again, he’s in the courtyard with a stone in his hands. He’s carrying it to a small square foundation of them that are already laid out on the ground, near the low wall that overlooks the valley. The stones are heavy, and his hands hurt. Before long, he notices red smears on the stones as he sets them into place. He doesn’t mind the pain; at first he was a little afraid that he might be dead too. Ghosts don’t bleed, or get cold and hungry and thirsty, as he does as he works into the night._

_Someone turns on the helicopter pad lights. A soldier tries to take a stone from him; he slaps the man’s hands away. The walls that he is building are up to his chest now and his arms shake a bit when he lifts the stones up. His hands are numb now, past pain. That’s okay._

_He has the shape of how he wants the structure to look in his head, but it keeps scattering like snow when he thinks too hard about it. That’s okay too. He just has to keep putting the stones one on top of the other, making them fit neatly._

_His soldiers try to help, but he won’t let them. This is something that a king does, and he is still the King. Ishwari could help him though, she’s the closest thing to a queen that he’ll ever have. Where is she? Where is Ajay? Who is watching the baby? He tries to ask the soldiers, but the answers sound like they’re coming from underwater. Someone brings food and hot tea but he doesn’t want it. The smell of Ishwari’s flowers by the back door remind him of her hair._

_Gary is there now, with one of the guardsmen. He is talking to him but it’s just sounds; nothing important. Then Gary says Ishwari’s name and he tries to listen but they’re grabbing his arms, and he fights them. He’s leaving red handprints on their nice clean uniforms. They try to pin him to the ground and almost succeed but he twists and gets a hand up to the guardsman’s harness, jerks the guard’s combat knife free of its sheath and buries it in his thigh. The man goes down howling. He swings back and slams his elbow into Gary’s face so hard the shock jolts all the way down to the ends of his fingers._

_There are other hands on him then, too many to fight off. The hands shove him flat and hold him there. Someone has their hand on the side of his head, grinding his face into the pebbles and dead leaves. He doesn’t feel it much though. He doesn’t know why they keep trying to stop him._

_Someone’s making a strange sound and he realizes it’s coming from him and that he’s probably been making it for awhile now. A low-pitched, unending moan of negation. His vision goes strange and drops of water splash onto the ground. Maybe he’s the one that was underwater. If they’d just let him up, he can go find_

_He raises his head and everything is on fire._

_He doesn’t think it’s nighttime, but the smoke and fire hide the sun. He’s crouched down with a rifle across his knees, covered with blood. His hands are bloody, white knuckles showing through where he’s clutching the gun. He tries to make himself let go but his fingers won’t unlock._

_The ground is churned mud and blood, a reddish-brown paste, and his boots are sinking into it. Everything is red; the sky, the ground, the smoke rolling across the field, the bodies that surround him. Even his hair, dripping, almost in his eye. The body armor he’s wearing feels too tight around his ribs. Difficult to get a breath._

_Some of the bodies around him have red uniforms but most of them wear blue and yellow, where it’s not obscured by dirt. By offal. It doesn’t matter really, they’re all dead. Maybe he’s dead, too. But that doesn’t matter either. He lets his head drop, rests his forehead on the warm metal of the rifle. His hair drips gore into the mud, on the_

 

 

He comes back to himself, wakes with hot water pouring down on his head. He’s in the shower, his own shower, sitting in the floor of it. The lights are off; the only illumination is from the small, high-set window. It’s plenty of light for him to be able to see Ishwari’s letter on the sink. He stands up slowly, and for some reason every muscle hurts. He turns off the water, gets a towel, dries mechanically. He moves towards the sink, toward the letter, lifts his hand over it, lets his fingertips barely touch it. The paper is that soft handmade sort that is common all over Kyrat and her words are in a sharp, messy scrawl, in contrast to her usual careful script. She was always proud of her education, her ability to write in English. This is still her writing but a hurried version, a frightened version. Maybe a pained version.

He lets his fingers splay, his hand rest flat on her letter. He thinks that maybe he can feel some of that pain through the paper, a resonance in his chest, the longing for her, for all of them already a hard spike. Almost searing. It hurts immensely and will probably get worse before it gets better, will probably cripple him, but it’s still preferable to that choking ice. That squeezing pressure. He runs his fingers over her name again and again.

The shattered pieces of his mind, of what was Pagan Min, are starting to coalesce and reassert themselves in a configuration that is somewhat similar to what it was before. Like a broken vase carefully reassembled but the pattern not quite right.

This paper is his talisman. This letter made that reassembly possible. She says that she loves him, and that they’ll be together again. One day. So, he will wait for that day. It’s the absolute least he can do, after he failed them all so terribly, as a partner, as a father. He’d held Lakshmana on the day she was born and swore to her that he would be nothing like Gang, that her childhood would be so much better than his own, that she was loved so much. Cherished. 

So many broken promises.

Gang had been a shit husband and a worse father, but at least he’d been able to keep him alive. Kept him and Yuma both alive. There’s a certain bitter irony there, he thinks.

He will wait here for her then, and he feels a bit better for having decided that. No melodramatically flinging himself off a cliff, no pitiful notes and then the muzzle of a gun in his mouth, no. He’ll glue himself back together as best he can, and he’ll put one foot in front of the other and wait for them, for her and Ajay to come home again.

  
  


\----------------------------------------

Standing on the shore, facing east  
I can't feel you

Standing on the shore, my ear aimed east  
I can't hear you  
I can't hear you anymore

I still remember  
Laughing and fighting  
I still remember

Standing on the floor, facing you  
I can't see you, your impermanence  
This place is empty  
Empty of you

And if I see you, it's like nothing went wrong  
Yeah, if we meet again tomorrow, just like nothing went wrong  
But they all call

Erasing our chances just by asking how we sleep

_LCD Soundsystem - how do you sleep?_

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End file.
